As these types of events typically do, the discussion meandered through many different topics including the reasons our agencies have decided to use WordPress as our platform for many of our projects, about how someone can get started using WordPress, about JavaScript and how it is the language that is currently eating the web, and even a bit about baking bread somehow.

One question that was posited by Phil Erb, our moderator for the evening, was what do the agencies or individuals get out of the WordPress community. Most of the answers were focused on what each individual gleans from WordPress-related events. If you’ve read my blog at all you know that I’m a strong advocate for attending events and that I think they have immense value. It was good to see all of the panelists agree on this point. I hope it spurs some in the audience to attend even more events and certainly more events out of the area and bring that energy and knowledge back to our nook in the mountains here in Pennsylvania.

It was a great meetup in a great space. Very glad to have been part of it.

Thanks to Phil and Stephanie for organizing the event, to Jack and his team for opening up their new space to us (they should be proud of the space they’ve created there, it is lovely), to Liam and Lauren for driving a few hours through fog and lastly to Liam for sharing his Duke’s pizza with me.

While we all share some similarities in terms of our background and types of organizations we’ve been a part of, what was most interesting to me was how we all use our knowledge not only to aid our clients, but at one point or another, to also help our own entrepreneurial endeavors. This is especially of note when it comes to the topic of digital marketing. While we look for solutions uniquely positioned for each of our clients, we all work daily to market our own businesses online too. In short we aren’t only working with the tools and techniques for our clients we are also leveraging them for our own organization’s goals.

I like Jack’s point here. The intimate knowledge a marketing firm must have to serve both their client’s unique interests and their own is manifold. And, it is a constantly moving target. Every single week there is a brand-new release of each of the front-running platform’s apps which add new features and capabilities. One incredible example of this is that Facebook’s Messenger app just passed version 100 this week.

It is an incredible time to be a marketer. Not only are small businesses getting far more reach for their money than ever before, they can also laser focus that reach and measure exactly where that spend is going with fine detail. To top it off, this capability also keeps the marketing firms honest and working really hard to squeeze every bit of return on their client’s investment. It is, quite literally, the very best time to spend money on marketing.